Ensign Knightley | Page 4

Lord, Knightley, I tell you you have had the better part of it."
"You!" cried Knightley. "You dragged a chain on Tangier Mole? For what offence?" And he added, with a genuine tenderness, "There was no disgrace in't, I'll warrant."
Major Shackleton half checked an exclamation, and turned it into a cough. Scrope leaned right across the table and stared straight into Knightley's eyes.
"The offence was a duel," he answered steadily, "fought on the night of January 6th two years ago."
Knightley's face clouded for an instant. "The night when I was captured," he said timidly.
"Yes."
The officers drew closer about the table, and seemed to hold their breath, as the strange catechism proceeded.
"With whom did you fight?" asked Knightley.
"With a very good friend of mine," replied Scrope, in a hard, even voice.
"On what account?"
"A woman."
Knightley laughed with a man's amused leniency for such escapades when he himself is in no way hurt by them.
"I said there would be no disgrace in't, Harry," he said, with a smile of triumph.
The heads of the listeners, which had bunched together, were suddenly drawn back. A dark flush of anger overspread Scrope's face, and the veins ridged up upon his forehead. Some impatient speech was on the tip of his tongue, when the Major interposed.
"What's this talk of penalties? Where's the sense of it? Scrope paid the price of his fault. He was admitted to the ranks afterwards. He won a lieutenancy by sheer bravery in the field. For all we know he may be again a captain to-morrow. Anyhow he wears the King's uniform. It is a badge of service which levels us all from Ensign to Major in an equality of esteem."
Scrope bowed to the Major and drew back from the table. The other officers shuffled and moved in a welcome relief from the strain of their expectancy, and Knightley's thoughts were diverted by Shackleton's words to a quite different subject. For he picked with his fingers at the Moorish robe he wore and "I too wore the King's uniform," he pleaded wistfully.
"And shall do so again, thank God," responded the Major heartily.
Knightley started up from his chair; his face lightened unaccountably.
"You mean that?" he asked eagerly. "Yes, yes, you mean it! Then let it be to-night--now--even before I sup. As long as I wear these chains, as long as I wear this dress, I can feel the driver's whip curl about my shoulders." He parted the robe as he spoke, and showed that underneath he wore only a coarse sack which reached to his knees, with a hole cut in it for his head.
"True, you have worn the chains too long," said the Major. "I should have had them knocked off before, but--" he paused for a second, "but your coming so surprised me that of a truth I forgot," he continued lamely. Then he turned to Tessin. "See to it, Tessin! Ensign Barbour of the Tangier Foot was killed to-day. He was quartered in the Main-Guard. Take Knightley to his quarters and see what you can do. By the way, Knightley, there's a question I should have put to you before. By what road did you come in?"
"Down Teviot Hill past the Henrietta Fort. The Moors brought me down from Mequinez to interpret between them and their prisoners. I escaped last night."
"Past the Henrietta Fort?" replied the Major. "Then you can help us, for that way we make our sortie."
"To relieve the Charles Fort?" said Knightley. "I guessed the Charles Fort was surrounded, for I heard one man on the Tangier wall shouting through a speaking trumpet to the Charles Fort garrison. But it will not be easy to relieve them. The Moors are entrenched between. There are three trenches. I should never have crawled through them, but that I stripped a dead Moor of his robe."
"Three trenches," said Tessin, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Yes, three. The two nearest to Tangier may be carried. But the third--it is deep, twelve feet at the least, and wide, at the least eight yards. The sides are steep and slippery with the rain."
"A grave, then," said Scrope carelessly; "a grave that will hold many before the evening falls. It is well they made it wide and deep enough."
The sombre words knocked upon every heart like a blow on a door behind which conspirators are plotting. The Major was the first to recover his speech.
"Curse your tongue, Scrope!" he said angrily. "Let who will lie in your grave when the evening falls. Before that time comes, we'll show these Moors so fine a powder-play as shall glut some of them to all eternity. _Bon chat, bon rat_; we are not made of jelly. Tessin, see to Knightley."
The two men withdrew. Major Shackleton scribbled a note and despatched it to Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant-Governor. Scrope took